Hi, I'm Laura Ingalls Wilder and I seem to only be worth studying if you're a woman! via mrhsfan @ flickr
Yesterday marked the beginning of my fall semester as I slog my way towards my BA. So far, so great. My first course is a gender studies class that examines women intellectuals, writers, and scholars from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. (It’s also my first gender studies course in ten years — long overdue.) Looking around the room as the two-hour class came to an end, I noticed something peculiar: there was nary a dude in sight. I mentioned this to a friend and classmate on our way out, and she commented that maybe any prospective male students would feel intimidated. I suppose she could be right, but what logic is there in being intimidated by studying the intellectual accomplishments of women and reading works by everyone from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to Laura Ingalls Wilder? It’s terribly frustrating, to be honest.
On the bright side, my class looks great and I’m happy that it’s definitely not wanting in attendance. Still, where are the guys? Is it really too much to hope that there might be a man out there who recognizes that studying women’s intellectual history and the broader implications in world history is something that does not need to be limited to students who lack Y chromosomes. SarahMC kindly pointed me to an NPR interview in which Bonnie Morris, a professor of women’s studies at George Washington University, speaks plainly about the stereotypes attached to that field of study. The interview, conducted by Bob Edwards, talks a great deal about feminism, and that’s when it struck me that not once during my class yesterday did I remember hearing that F word — which, in the context of what the course covers, makes sense. But was the mere possibility of discussing feminism in an academic context too much for some of my male counterparts? Did they see the course title (Gender and Knowledge) and expect it to be all about man-bashing instead of history? It’s worth noting that the course is actually within the history department, as there is no women’s studies/gender studies department at my college
So if any of our male readers stumble upon this post, I’d love to know if you have ever taken a women’s studies/gender studies course. If not, was it because it was not offered at your school or because you felt you might be out of place taking that course?
I’m jumping in quite late to the conversation here, but I think that part of the problem is the continued division of feminine and masculine -oriented disciplines. I absolutely don’t deny the importance of feminist history/studies but I think the time has come in mainstream liberal arts education (especially in undergrad, where less specialization is necessary), for true Gender Studies to be more widely offered. Classes that focus on the construction of Gender and how that dialectic plays out in the humanities can be so much more inclusive, encouraging both men and women to participate and give valuable input. Masculine and Feminist studies still have a lot of work to do in academia, but I think they just “work” better in graduate school, when students are really digging into advanced concepts, and have had some experience with basic theories of gender.
Oh Andy, your post makes me so sad. Has anyone really gotten in your face personally about your decision to stay home with your kids? If so, they should be ashamed of themselves.
We, as feminists, should support each other’s decisions on this matter. I was a stay at home mom too, and I was lucky to be able to be one. But it’s not the right choice for everyone. I’m sure it would be easy to find lots of people who had working parent(s), went to day care and after school care and are happy, well-functioning people who love and are loved by their parents.
There are many, many women out there who wish with all their hearts that they had your power to choose to stay home with their kids. But the days of the one-wage-earner family seem to be gone for good for a large segment of our society. Surely you don’t believe that those women should deny themselves the opportunity to have children.And if a mother is working out of choice rather than economic necessity, how is that necessarily a bad thing? A woman who’s content and using all of her powers has to be a better parent than one who’s at home but bored and frustrated. Oh, and the term “day orphanage” is really unnecessarily harsh and denigrates the hard work of thousands of women and men.
I agree with you that the idea that we can “have it all” is false and harmful. It leads to the situation so common now in which women are criticized, and criticize themselves, regardless of what they do with their lives. The reality is that adults have to make hard choices. As feminists, we should support our sisters by supporting the choices they make. Some of those choices may bring sadness and regret along with satisfaction and joy. But we deserve respect for the choices we make, whatever they are.
I suppose it would have been more accurate to say that women are encouraged to imitate the life trajectories of men. Get an education, turn that into a job, work hard at that job for a number of consecutive years, advance to more responsibilities and then retire. This model allows for all kinds of changes in jobs or positions, but what it does not allow for is a concentrated time out of the workforce to do the absolutely vital job of caring for infants and small children.
Sending babies out to the hired help to care for may have a long aristocratic tradition in our culture, but so does denigrating people for their skin color. That doesn’t make it right.
And why is unacceptable for me to criticize people who turn their children into orphans for the day, but perfectly acceptable for others to call me a prostitute because I married my husband for his ability to provide financial resources for our children during their critical young years? Obviously, this ability was not the only reason I chose him, but had he been a mime in the park living off of spare change, none of those other qualities would have mattered.
There are in fact many occupations that allow women to leave the workforce, and then return when they have reared their children beyond infancy and toddlerhood. P.Eng is a good example. My closest friend took seven years off to raise her children and is now back at work designing high speed rail cars. Another friend is a medical doctor who has four children, but who will still be an M.D. if and when she decides to return to work. I myself have a very specific set of banking skills that will allow me to return to work whenever I choose.
The point is that by embracing a male definition of work and life, women are unable to meet their unique and specific set of responsibilities to their children. Babies emerge from a body knowing that particular heartbeat, knowing that particular smell, rooting for that particular breast to feed them, nourish them, love them. Spending the first few years next to their mother is the optimal situation for the baby.
All humans want and need useful work to do. Caring for infants in the best possible way is the most useful work any woman can do, but then the little urchins grow up, and our minds turn to other sorts of work. Both kinds of work are utterly vital to the well-being of any community.
I found most of the women in my women’s studies course to be in complete denial of the fact that they have a biological destiny they can choose not to engage by not having children, but if they want children there is just no getting around the fact that a baby will have to grow inside their own personal uterus (or the own personal uterus of some other WOMAN). One way or another, a woman’s biology is going to be required.
Gay, straight, transgendered, it doesn’t matter. Someone needs to have a uterus, female hormones and a vagina (to get the sperm in and the baby out, ideally). That someone is a woman.
I personally think women’s studies as a discipline has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. There are a few truths that no amount of post-modern contortion can eradicate. If you drop an apple, it will fall. Gravity is an immutable truth. If you want a baby human, you’re going to need a woman to carry that baby in her uterus. And in doing so, she will create a relationship with that little person that is optimally fulfilled by her specific presence, for a number of years.
Biology really IS destiny. But it has nothing to do with being an engineer, a doctor, a police officer or a garbage collector. It has to do with WHEN you are these things. And that is NOT when you are the mother of a small child.
@Andy: At this point, I feel compelled to mention that I was recently pregnant and worked full-time while going to school during the pregnancy. Although my son was stillborn, my destiny WAS NOT all about my uterus. And yes, I was able to ace my courses despite morning sickness. And yes, I was still going to work and rely on daycare if my Sammy had been born. Because I did not have the choice not to. The fact that you can say “Sending babies out to the hired help to care for may have a long aristocratic tradition in our culture, but so does denigrating people for their skin color. That doesn’t make it right.” is enough to leave me gobsmacked. Aristocratic tradition? I’m on financial aid at college and live in an extremely tiny apartment. No aristocratic tradition have compelled me to seek out daycare. Necessity did. My destiny was motherhood (or I thought it was until I lost him), but it was also to earn my degree and be self-sufficient, because I did not have a partner to help out. So please, don’t start the Mommy Wars around me.
@Andy – Well, the thing is, that’s not a very realistic view of the world. I think you’re being a tad bit overly optimistic about how kindly many potential employers look upon a several-year gap in one’s resume. Certainly there are some professions that are friendlier towards that sort of thing than others, and certain employers, but it’s not by any means reliable. Moreover, all of the professions you mentioned are only accessible to people with a lot of education. You’re showing a lot of class privilege by only mentioning that sort of profession and by not acknowledging that for most Americans, raising a child on a single income is not feasible.
The other huge problem with your post is that, again, you’re not recognizing alternate modes of parenting. Children who are adopted, or raised by grandparents, or even, shockingly, raised by their fathers have just as much potential to be happy, productive members of society as children raised by stay-at-home mothers. In fact, in many cultures throughout history, grandparents have played an integral role in raising children from a very young age (this was the case in Japan, for example, for a long time). Do you have any proof at all that children who are raised primarily by the woman who gave birth to them have better lives — by any measure — than other children? Because I’ve never seen anything to suggest that. What I’ve seen is that the most important thing for a child is having (one or more) adults around who listen and support and care for that child. The number or gender or age of the adults is immaterial.
Another thing I’ve seen, in your post above especially, is letting fathers off the hook. If I marry a man and have kids with him, regardless of who’s earning what amount of money, he’d better be an equal parenting partner. If caring for infants is so important as to be the best possible work that a woman could ever do, why aren’t men expected to partake? What’s the best possible work that a man could do, then?
A couple other small points: you do realize, don’t you, that it’s feminists by and large who agitate for paid maternity and paternity leave and consideration for mothers in the workplace? We’re trying to make it so that working and caring for children aren’t incompatible for anyone. Is that not a better option? To make it easier for any person to take time off work to care for kids?
And it’s not okay for people to personally call you a prostitute for marrying a man who can make money. But it is reasonable to critique the institution of marriage, in a historical sense, as being primarily an exchange of goods similar to prostitution.
@SOALG: Oh, Lord, Sarah, I’m so sorry to hear that. You have my most heartfelt sympathy.
@Andy: Calling each other names is rude and unproductive, but I don’t believe that anyone did that here.
I sense a certain amount of defensiveness in your posts. I don’t know if that’s the result of personal encounters you’ve had with people who have criticized your decisions or whether you are reacting to a perceived “feminist critique” of stay-at-home moms. And again, people who attack you for your choice are out of line and misunderstand what feminism is.
Still, I don’t believe there’s any one right way for men or women to live their lives. Maybe the problem isn’t that “women are encouraged to imitate the life trajectories of men”. Maybe the problem is that the entire system is wrong. Maybe both men and women are too limited in the choices society offers them. Maybe some men would like to take time out to rear their young kids while their female partners work. Maybe they’d like to split the time. Maybe a woman has kids but relates better to them as they get older, and would like help with them when they’re little.
IMO, our society doesn’t particularly like children-that’s the reason stay at home moms don’t feel respected. If we did care about our kids., we’d pay our child care workers the salaries they deserve. New parents would get more than a paltry month or 6 weeks off after the birth/adoption of a baby. Women would have access to comprehensive reproductive health care so they could have children only when and if they were ready to do so. Every child would have comprehensive health care and adequate food, clothing and shelter. Yeah, we love our kids-in theory. But it’s unfair and inaccurate to blame those shortcomings on feminism.
Finally, I can’t believe you really, truly believe that biology is destiny. If you’ve ever used birth control, or gotten a PAP smear, you know that’s not true.
Andy! WOW!
Do the other feminists you know begin their paroxysms of ideological rage before or after you lay down Biology is destiny?
Like I told someone else here a couple of days ago, there is something in your post that is causing people to react strongly and negatively to you. Perhaps you should take a look at that before you deign to post again.
Baraqiel pretty much said it all, but I just want to chime in and say I agree with her.
I’m currently at a crossroads and spending a lot of time thinking about how I want to live my life, and noticing more and more the myriad pressures on women in particular–on the one hand, we are told we can do anything, but on the other, that message is undermined by social codes that still make it impossible for women to ‘have everything’ and not feel that they are failing in some way, either because they are ‘putting their children in a day orphanage’ (what a horrible phrase) or not fulfilling themselves in the workplace or not adequately caring for their parents.
If society could do one thing better, it would be recognising the validity of varying life models – to work or not to work, to have children or not, to marry or not, to have one partner or many, to love men or women – and view them all as viable and equally deserving of respect, as long as certain constants are there (doing no harm to others, the presence of love and care for one’s fellow man). /Rant.
Andy – if you see this – you have been banned. You have been banned (and identified as a troll) not because you offered a dissenting viewpoint. You have been banned because you are being an asshole. Seriously, what kind of person lectures someone they don’t know from Eve on the internet about what they should or should not have done with their dead child? You have succeeded only in bringing your already inane arguments to the point of personal hurtfulness. Take that shit somewhere else.
Others – knock it off, please. I appreciate that you were trying to be patient. But you guys, people who come to this site who obviously have no real interest in “feminism” beyond applying the label to themselves and their actions – those people are not to be encouraged. I realize there’s no obvious rule in a situation like this one, but it was pretty clear to me from the get-go that this was not a person here to do anything but trash feminism. Follow the Barney Frank rule: if it looks like a kitchen table, and it argues like a kitchen table, it probably is, indeed, a kitchen table. With a troll under it.
Sorry. Dining room table. My bad.
N SERIO KNOCK OFF THIS THREAD OF THE CONVO GUYS.
ETA: I have deleted Andy’s offending comment because it’s bullshit. C’est la vie, asswipe!
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Yes, I took some, and I was the 2nd guy at the college I was at to get the “women’s studies certificate” (which was FL’s version of a minor). The number of male students in the “intro” class was never more than a few, and some would sit in the back and be hecklers.
The majority of classes in the program were listed under other majors: sociology, nursing, etc. Those classes had the same demographics as the school the class was offered under. The oddest class was the nursing one, with a rather inflamatory title, and as it was always over-full, the instructor gave first dibs to the women’s studies students (which did not endear me at all to the nursing students – especially my room-mate).
I was working on 2nd bachelor’s because the grad school I was looking into wasn’t convinced I “could do it” as my undergrad grades were not all that great (I ended up dropping out of their masters program). So I worked on 2nd bachelor’s in “arts and humanities” (it was easier to take classes as a degree seeking student than as a non-degree student) and managed to meet all the requirements with women’s studies classes (except for philosophy, where the choices were “dead white guys” or “dead white guys”). In almost every class, I was the only engineer, as everyone else was in a liberal arts program.
Most folks I’ve talked to about “women’s studies” ask with all seriousness where is the “men’s studies” program, and I’ll usually reply that the rest of the university is “men’s studies.” I find that those hecklers don’t want to hear it, they just want to complain about something.
The cost of university has gone up too much these days, so I couldn’t afford to scratch those intellectual itches in the same fashion that I could afford 15 years ago. I don’t know about your university, but the ones near where I live (and I’m now working on a masters in a different subject) end up costing about $1500 per 3 credit course (it is a state university). Consequently, all the classes I’m taking apply directly towards my degree, or towards a current need at the office.
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[...] that), but in terms of the demographics of my fellow students in two particular courses. Last year I was disappointed by the fact that there was nary a dude in my course on women’s intellectual history; this [...]